Toys have been around for thousands of years. Egyptian, Grecian, and Roman children played with toys that were made from stone, pottery, wax, wood, and other primitive materials. These toys, however, were static and children were left to use their imagination in forming animations or personalities for the toys. More recently toys have included mechanical features that allowed for simple mechanical movements or for the recitation of a word or phrase when the child pulled a string.
With the proliferation of computers, actuators, and processing technology, interactive toys and computer games have become more common. In some cases, these toys are capable of using this technology to sense the environment, make decisions, and interact with children. Creating a toy having various personality traits is even more difficult. Traditional tools for creating scripts and content are too simplistic to allow for the efficient creation of complex interactive content. Moreover, traditional toys typically do not provide any feedback regarding how the toys are being used. As a result, the content creators are left to write the scripts based on specifications set before the toy is released to the public. As such, there are a number of challenges and inefficiencies found in traditional tools for creating content for artificial intelligence systems such as toys and games.